Random Musings 14

Last Saturday I finally had a chance to get back to Brooklyn Museum for 2 exhibitions I've been wanting to see. John Singer Sargent Watercolors celebrates 2 major collections of watercolors by Sargent (1856-1925), owned by Brooklyn and the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston. Joined together for this exhibition, there is a clear distinction between the more finished set of pictures purchased in 1912 by Boston and the 1909 purchase by Brooklyn, which are more sketch-like. Depending on your taste and interest in how an artist thinks, each of the works will appeal to viewers differently. The show is arranged thematically, with segments on Italy and sailing, for instance. Sargent was born in Italy to American parents and lived throughout Europe (I still have a difficult time thinking of him as an "American" artist), so he was well-traveled for his day and time. One of my favorite watercolors from the show was the work you see above, Corfu: Lights & Shadows, 1909, from the MFA, in which he represents a small building on the Greek island, but captures all the sensation of sunshine using different hues to show how the branches of the trees cast shadows onto the white building. It is truly a tour de force of a work, revealing how Sargent's handling of color and lighting can convey atmospheric conditions and the emotional satisfaction of the place he's showing the viewer.
In sharp contrast to Sargent's work, I also enjoyed the exhibition showcasing the work of contemporary Nigerian artist El Anatsui. Although he has had a long career, his more recent works using found objects from garbage dumps (tin can lids, bottle caps, twist-ties, etc.) have made him internationally famous. He recreates large-scale sculptural installations that are fascinating. They appear like tapestries of gold. They are the detritus of society reimagined as beauty, and thus say much about the interactions of different classes and ethnic groups in the cultural exchange of the objects as they were imported from Europe and rebranded as "African" products. This is an installation shot I took of some of his works hanging in the main rotunda of the building.

In my last Random Musing, I posted an update about the New York Public Library's Central Library Plan. bklynbiblio followers will recall that I've been among the many criticizing them for their plans to renovate the main historic building and research center, and turn it into the modern-day equivalent of a library-like Internet Starbucks cafe. Under pressure from critics, NYPL President Tony Marx has agreed to have an independent committee evaluate the plans, according to this article in The New York Times (thanks, PR, for the lead). We will see what this next chapter will bring.

Two years ago, I blogged about my new fiction discovery, British novelist Barbara Pym (1913-1980; thanks again to TC for the introduction!). Her short novel Excellent Women (1952) has become one of my favorite books. I can see her influence on other British women writers I enjoy reading, such as A.S. Byatt and Ruth Rendell. The charm of Excellent Women is that nothing really happens. The book focuses on Mildred Lathbury, who makes tea, helps decorate the local church, unexpectedly gets involved in the drama of her neighbors, and makes observations about everyone in her life in an ever-so-judgmental Christian way that will have you laughing aloud. Her later novels are reportedly darker, but I haven't gotten to those yet. Pym is also an inspiration to writers. Her first few novels sold modestly well, and then publishers refused to publish her because she was seen as old fashioned. It took years before she was published again, and that book wound up winning her the Booker Prize. The lesson learned is never to give up. June was the centenary of her birth, so you can read up more about her life and novels in these laudatory articles in The Telegraph and The New York Times. There's even The Barbara Pym Society website to peruse as well.

Archaeology published a tidbit of fascinating news: this 400-lb. stone sculpture of a nude female torso was excavated in Brooklyn in the DUMBO area (that's "Down Under the Manhattan Bridge Overpass" for non-Brooklynites). There are traces of paint on it, and she's been dubbed Ginger because this area had spice warehouses in the 19th century, but no one knows much about who she is or why she was there.

And, finally, I had to wrap up this musing with something rather fun. Ever hear the joke about how to make an Italian stop talking? You tie his hands behind his back! Italians talk with their hands. I even do it, and half the time I don't even realize it. There is an article in the NYT exploring how these gestures may have a more important role in communicating and reach back to ancient Roman days. There's also a short, fun video that explores the topic some more, and this interactive feature of animated images that shows you just a small handful of the more than 250 gestures that are considered part of Italian communicating. Enjoy! (Insert hand gesture here.)

Review: Yinka Shonibare MBE

The first time I ever read the name Yinka Shonibare was on a wall label in a museum around the year 2000. I still cannot remember which museum I was in when I read his name and the title of the piece. However, I do remember clearly the work of art itself, and how much I laughed at its sardonic, artistic referentialism. The piece was Mr. and Mrs. Andrews Without Their Heads. The figures and their dog are taken from a picture by Thomas Gainsborough in which he was both honoring, and ridiculing, his parvenu patrons. To this day, whenever I encounter Shonibare’s posed mannequins in museums, I cannot help but grin because of their playfulness, originality, and consciousness about art and history. The Brooklyn Museum is one of 3 cities showing his mid-career exhibition of sculptures, photography, and films. I returned today for a second look. To quote curator Rachel Kent from the exhibition catalog, Shonibare’s work “engage[s] with themes of time: of history and its legacy for future generations, of how we live in the present and of cycles or patterns that repeat across time, despite their often destructive consequences” (12). I was pleasantly surprised when a security guard told me I could take pictures without a flash, so the image you see here is by me (sadly, my digital camera takes terrible pictures in museums). The 2001 work is called The Swing (after Fragonard); placed at the entrance to the exhibition, it beautifully encapsulates Shonibare’s oeuvre.

Yet, despite its frivolity and humor, Shonibare’s work also conveys serious commentary about cultural relations. He is a British-born Nigerian artist who in 2005 was knighted as a Member of the Order of the British Empire (MBE), a title he proudly wears because of the ironic associations it has with the subtext of his art. The textiles he uses on his mannequins are Dutch wax fabrics, originally manufactured in Europe for the West African market in the 19th century. Yes, believe it or not, most of the textiles we associate with traditional African clothing originated in northern Europe, meaning that this trademark of “Africanness” was in fact branded by European imperialism to give them an identity that Westerners could recognize as “African.” This intercultural ambiguity is part of Shonibare’s intent, for he consciously obfuscates national identities in his sculptures. Shonibare’s work also references masterpieces of 18th- and 19th-century European art. The Rococo and Victorianism are of particular interest to him. The Rococo is associated with Western aristocratic frivolity and nouveau riche leisure, but it is worth recalling that much of that wealth came from their involvement in the African slave trade. Victorianism in turn alludes to the British Empire’s worldwide domination over third-world lands like India and Africa. Shonibare’s sculptures thus reference Western scenes of success while implying their unseen opposite, the dominated people and lands of Africa, India, and so on.

The Swing (after Fragonard) comes from a 1767 painting by Jean-Honore Fragonard located in the Wallace Collection, London (image courtesy of the Web Gallery of Art). I think this painting shows one of the most erotic scenes in Western art. Notice how the woman kicks off her shoe, flirting by exposing her silk stockinged leg to her lover hiding in the bushes before her. But who is pushing the swing? A priest, who presumably is another of her lovers. The cotton ball-like shrubbery and statue of Cupid are classic Fragonard and add to the sensuality of the subject itself. Shonibare borrows on the eroticism of the woman, excising her from the picture and aestheticizing her in sculptural form. What is missing of course is her head, and this introduces another fascinating layer in Shonibare’s work. Despite that his mannequins have a startling sense of naturalism, they are all in fact headless. One need only think of the guillotine to realize what is being referenced here: Revolution. Every Western empire eventually loses its proverbial head, and so the decapitated body in Shonibare’s work becomes a pseudo-memento mori of Western dominance. At the same time, however, Shonibare’s headless figures are still eroticized bodies. He is fetishizing the fragment. In her groundbreaking essay “Manet’s Masked Ball at the Opera,” Linda Nochlin argued that in Western art the fragmented female body becomes a form of sexual commodity for men to possesses. In some ways, I think Shonibare’s decapitated bodies fall in line with this mode of thought, in particular because the mannequins wear fabrics that are directly tied to imperialist trade between Europe and Africa. As a result, figures like the woman in The Swing become fetishized, imperialized bodies, but the line between dominatrix and slave are blurred. These figures create erotic commodity, but they are simultaneously complicit in their own exploitation.

For the Brooklyn exhibition, specially commissioned figures of children have been posed in some of the period rooms, which adds an interesting layer to things, seeing them in actual historic settings. His large installation piece, Gallantry and Criminal Conversation, 2002, is shocking and hilarious. Conjuring aspects of the Grand Tour with sexual awakenings, 11 mannequins are dressed in their finest but posed in a variety of sexual couplings (my favorite is the threesome with a woman bent over a traveling case while a man penetrates her from behind and is simultaneously penetrated by another man behind him). Shonibare’s photographic series Dorian Gray is based on Oscar Wilde’s 1891 novel and the 1945 film adaptation. Here the artist poses as Gray and his aging portrait. His films are interesting, perhaps hypnotic, as the characters move as if in real time and take the sculptural tableaux beyond space to the next dimension of time. If you’re in NYC, you need to experience all of it for yourself. The exhibition (which began in Sydney, Australia) closes at the Brooklyn Museum on September 20, but it moves to the National Museum of African Art in Washington, D.C. from November 10 through March 7, 2010. On the Brooklyn Museum’s website for the exhibition, you can also see an excerpt of a video in which Shonibare talks about The Swing. For more information, see the exhibition catalog, which has essays about Shonibare’s work, an interview with him, and incredible full-color images of his work.